Benton Harbor is an extreme example of several trends — bankruptcy, racial segregation and, above all, income inequality. How many places like Benton Harbor are there in America?

A.

Benton Harbor really is an extreme example — to be the poorest town in a state as deeply troubled as Michigan is no mean feat — but as you say the underlying problems are hardly unique. The downward spiral — the absence of jobs creates a kind of permanent underclass; the permanent underclass creates a declining tax base; the declining tax base damages city services, local schools most of all, making positive change that much more difficult — is all too common in American cities now. What is different about Benton Harbor is that, for better or worse, it has a Fortune 500 company with a vested interest in its future.

Q.

One of the leaders of the Harbor Shores development, Marcus Robinson imagines a very attractive future for Benton Harbor as an affluent African-American town. But you write that the parts of Benton Harbor that are being renewed from one perspective and gentrified from another, from the golf club to the arts district, are white-dominated. In the ’60s it seems Benton Harbor was less segregated. Did prosperity somehow track with increased racial mixing? You mention race riots — what happened?

A.

I’m not sure Benton Harbor was ever fully, comfortably integrated, though it certainly did have a much larger white population and, because of all of the factory jobs, less income disparity. Once the jobs started disappearing, the vast majority of the white people did, too. Harbor Shores, the resort development, will presumably bring white people back, but not working-class white people, who could never afford the homes there.

One thing I didn’t really have the room to get into in the piece is that in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Benton Harbor became a kind of national symbol of the enduring racial divide in America. It was the setting for “The Other Side of the River,” Alex Kotlowitz’s excellent 1998 book about the death of a local black teenager last seen running down a street in St. Joseph, the predominantly white, middle-class town across the river. Then, in 2003, race riots erupted when a 27-year-old black man crashed his motorcycle into the side of an abandoned building in Benton Harbor while being chased by two white police officers. The national media flooded in. All of the attention that the town received actually contributed to the state’s resolve to get involved — which helped get Harbor Shores off the ground.

Q.

At Benton Harbor’s height, you write, 20,000 people lived there. Now 10,000 people live there. What is being done with the empty houses?

A.

A lot of the houses are abandoned. Some have already been razed, and a lot more will be razed soon, thanks to a big grant from HUD [U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development].

Q.

There is now a whole branch of urban planning devoted not to growing cities but to downsizing them. Parts of Detroit have become urban farms. When East German cities emptied out after reunification in 1990, municipal authorities literally turned the lights out in some areas. Does anyone imagine that Benton Harbor will regain enough population to avoid these types of measures?

A.

Yeah, in 1970s New York, serious thought was given to a plan known as “planned shrinkage” — basically abandoning some of the worst ghettos in the South Bronx and elsewhere. It’s hard to imagine Benton Harbor not ultimately emptying out, whether it’s a plan engineered by city and state administrators or just inevitable attrition, though where these people will go is anybody’s guess. I think the concern among many there is that the city is basically going to drive them out with higher taxes, water rates, etc. And the more paranoid fear is that Whirlpool and Harbor Shores want them out so they can have their way with the land.

Q.

Roger Lange is an interesting figure in your article. Chief of the combined fire and police departments, he doesn’t seem to have many resources at his disposal. Does he complain about the jury-rigged fire trucks you describe?

A.

Actually, no. Lange is a big supporter of what Joe Harris has been doing in Benton Harbor. He also claims that his police force is managing just fine after Harris’s budget cuts, largely because he’s been able to hire part-timers to replace the full-time, salaried employees he has lost.

Q.

Are the laws that allowed Harris to take over as an emergency manager in Benton Harbor on the books in states other than Michigan? If the only criterion for takeover were that city be “failing,” I could think of a lot of candidates — in California, Florida, Nevada.

A.

I’m not an expert on this, but my understanding is that some states have provisions that allow cities to declare states of emergency — and in so doing, request help from the state — but that Michigan’s Emergency Manager legislation is unique. The powers it gives an appointee of the state to circumvent elected officials really are breathtaking.

Bruce Grierson wrote this week’s cover story about Ellen Langer, a Harvard psychologist who has conducted experiments that involve manipulating environments to turn back subjects’ perceptions of their own age.Read more…